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The Role of GIS in Reporting

I am a business analyst with a GIS past. As an analyst, I am asked to present data in informative ways to executives. This is the…

Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash
Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash

I am a business analyst with a GIS past. As an analyst, I am asked to present data in informative ways to executives. This is the beginning of a series of articles in which I will demonstrate how GIS can be used in reporting for the masses. Whether you are a data scientist, an analyst, or a GIS professional, I will show on the fly uses for GIS and how that can transform your report into a universal showstopper. I will start here with why GIS is useful in reporting.

Traditional analyst reporting involves excel bar charts and pie graphs. Which is informative, but not necessarily exciting to executives.

Photo from OhTheHorror project by Author
Photo from OhTheHorror project by Author

This is where GIS comes in. The basis of maps was meant for people who weren’t experts. Historical maps were works of art. Admired for their exaggerated styles. Conceptually viewing maps as art gets to the heart of why they are universal. The Oxford Dictionary defines art as:

The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

Photo by British Library on Unsplash
Photo by British Library on Unsplash

Whenever you can elicit emotions in your reporting, you are reducing the work of the viewer to interpret. This is the key to creating reports for the masses. Take the below image:

Photo by KOBU Agency on Unsplash
Photo by KOBU Agency on Unsplash

Blue, green, and red stand out against the black background. And the size of the bubbles visually helps to see where the clustering is happening. Still blue envokes a non-threatening color that is easy on the eyes, so you can visually stand seeing large quantities of it. Whereas green is viewed as invigorating. Red definitely stands out as "danger". This is the power of GIS: so much is immediately gleaned without explanation.

Another example of how GIS helps reporting was a project I did in building a Twitter photo image classifier to find correlations in the data of mask vs non-mask wearers. Here is a traditional report I created:

Mask vs No Mask as a bar chart (Photo from BehindTheMask project by Author)
Mask vs No Mask as a bar chart (Photo from BehindTheMask project by Author)

Now, this is an impactful report showing the numbers for Mask vs No Mask photos on Twitter. But, if I put this into a map:

Mask vs No Mask as a map (Photo from BehindTheMask project by Author)
Mask vs No Mask as a map (Photo from BehindTheMask project by Author)

Even though the map is busier and requires the user to read the legend, ultimately it is conveying so much more information than the bar chart but in ways that are quick for the interpreter. It is visually displaying natural correlations like the distribution of mask wearers to states with mask mandates along with severe covid case distributions. It is also eliciting emotional responses through color.

In the next few articles, I will show quick ways to send out reports with maps for those who may not have a lot of GIS knowledge. These reports will also spotlight a shareability aspect to them.


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